Habit is a learned behavior that is repeated regularly and has become almost automatic like rising early in the morning, having a cup of tea in the breakfast, having a glass of milk before going to bed etc. These are the examples of habits which are limited to the individual. How you behave and respond to others is also a very important characteristic of your habit and plays a crucial role in defining your personality. The habits can be classified as good or bad.

In this article, I am going to discuss the 5 bad habits which affect you negatively and you must try to leave them right away through your discipline & efforts.These habits are as follows:

(1) The habit of the back-biting

â€‹We generally speak sweet in front of a person but bad mouth about him to the third person in his absence. Your speaking negative about a person will not serve any purpose but instead, it can have a disastrous effect not only on your relationship with that person but also on your personality.Why we do back-biting?The reasons can be either one or more of the following:

You are scared of that person because of her/his position

You do not like a person in terms of behavior or appearance

You feel jealous of her/his achievements

Sometimes to hide our own incompetence & need to satisfy our ego

Initially, the back biting will give you a kind of pseudo-relief but ultimately it will only intensify the above-mentioned feelings of jealousy, fear and incompetence. You will be trapped in these feelings which make back biting a habit that will diminish your personality.What should we do to avoid back-biting?

If you do not like a person for any of the above-mentioned reasons, instead of involving yourself in back-biting with third person, you should try to find the solution by doing any one or more of the following activities, like you can always politely talk to a person about her/his misbehavior if that has hurt you. This will not only give him a scope to improve his behavior towards you but also establish you as a strong personality in his mind. If even after talking, s/he does not improve, then the best way is to avoid but never do back biting

If someone has achieved anything that instead of feeling jealous, celebrate his success with him. The feeling of jealousy will eventually fade out and so the habit of backbiting

Try to do every possible effort to make yourself competent like acquaint yourself with the latest development in your field of working, improve your communication skills and participating in the extracurricular activities. These constructive activities will make you competent and you do not find any need for backbiting.

(2) The habit of reaching to the conclusion without having the full information

â€‹We are always in a hurry and jump to the conclusion without understanding the whole situation. We pass our verdict about a person or a situation just by giving a glance to it.Why we do this?We do this because we tend to avoid the process of information extraction which requires time & energy. The visual macro display of a situation creates a mirage effect in your mind which hides the micro details that exist behind the situation and you pass your verdict instantaneously without thinking twice.As micro details are generally hidden behind the situation, therefore it requires your time and energy to extract them out and get the real picture.Please look at the following situation & analyze it:

Macro Information

Micro details

Conclusion

Your best friend didn't attend your marriage

"You ignored"

You decide that you will not talk to him for life time

Your best friend didn't attend your marriage

You inquired & found that his mother was hospitalized on that day

You decide to meet his mother the very next day

(3) The habit of not forgiving the minor mistakes

â€‹Sometimes, we get so upset about other people minor mistakes that we end up wasting our precious time.Why we do so?We get upset because we have not expected this kind of negative behavior or action from a person.Please analyze the following situations:

You can see that after extracting the micro details of the situation, your conclusion took an opposite turn from not to talk to him for lifetime to meet him & his mother the very next day.If you would not have inquired the micro details of the situation & would have jumped to the conclusion, you could have lost your friendship for a lifetime and that too without his fault.Similarly, in our daily lives, we should try to extract the relevant information about the situation, before reaching to any conclusion.

Try to feel the situation

Try to find out the possible reasons behind this kind of behavior of a person

When you practice above activities, gradually your conclusion pattern about the things, situations and persons will change from negative to positive.

S.No

Situation

Other person's action or behaviour

Your reaction

1

You ordered a cup of tea

The waiter turns up with a cup of tea having a bad taste

You scolded him in front of others

2

You are travelling in a congested public vehicle

Someone is pushing you from behind

You ended up in a quarrel

3

You are in your car in a heavy traffic

The other car leaves a scratch in your car

You had a fight

4

You are waiting for a person

He turns up late

You get upset and use bad language

You can see that how minor mistakes took a bad shape by our reactions.What should we do to avoid this habit?We have to just redirect, channelize and mitigate the energies which are released out of other person actions and your reactions.Please re-analyze the same situations with following reactions:

S.No

Situation

Other person's action or behaviour

Your reaction

1

You ordered a cup of tea

The waiter turns up with a cup of tea having a bad taste

Re-direct your energy in ordering him another cup of tea

2

You are travelling in a congested public vehicle

Someone is pushing you from behind

Channelize his energy by saying go this way and let him go

3

You are in your car in heavy traffic

The other car leaves a scratch in your car

Mitigate the energy by mutual settlement

4

You are waiting for a person

He turns up late

Re-direct your energy to tell him to either leave early from home or take another route

This energy game will help you in forgiving & forgetting the minor mistakes and gradually, you will start enjoying the things.

(4) The habit of discussing more of people and the events rather than the new ideas

We usually devote most of our time in discussing about the personality traits of the persons & discuss about the past events, like:

I do not like his behavior

Her dressing sense is very poor

He is a failure

I like Mr. X more than Mr. Y

We were served poor food in the marriage party

When you are discussing the above things you are actually living in the past and growth never comes from past discussions, it comes from present actions.Why we do this?

The subject of discussion is already present in our mind in the form of past actions & behavior of people & past events, therefore your mind feels easy to discuss them. While on the other hand, your mind has to do exercise to come up with new subjects & ideas which require energy & efforts and we find it difficult.

All of us have some sort of deep-rooted beliefs, when we find events & personality traits in resonance with our beliefs, we give positive statements. While any mismatch between them results in a negative statement. The new ideas generally challenge your belief system and your comfort zone and you find it difficult to leave either of them.

The above activities will persuade you to think & try something new and the time allocation on a discussion about people & events will get reduced automatically.

(5) The habit of thinking more and doing less

We generally plan many things in our mind but our speed of implementation is very low. You know that our mind is very agile, it cannot remain idle. The countless ideas come into and go out of mind; some are useful while others are irrelevant.We collect so many ideas in our mind, postponing their implementation that results in:

Fading away of ideas

Rotting of ideas

Loss of relevance with time

And finally, the ideas die without being implemented.

In order to put them into real shape, ideas require your time, energy & efforts and because of this reason you keep on postponing their implementation.There has to be a resonance between what you think? and what you implement?What should we do?

Write down your ideas on paper

Try to make implementation plan of each idea like resources needed and the time required to give it a real shape

Take small & firm steps towards realization of your ideas

When you start giving shape to your ideas through implementation, you feel altogether a different kind of confidence & satisfaction.

Conclusion

Your reaction towards people, situations, and reaction towards your own ideas define your overall personality. The good habits can add shine to your personality while the bad ones can demean it. Therefore, you should make constant efforts to improve your personality by leaving bad habits.